Indian-origin Researcher Creates Biosensor for Machines to Smell the Way Humans Do

An Indian-origin researcher from the University of Manchester has created a biosensor that can help machines smell the way humans do with an acute ability to sniff out problems like finding when food has gone bad or how much pollution is in the atmosphere.

“It has been challenging to get machines to be able to differentiate between smells that are mirror images of each other, which was a real barrier to creating machines which are able to smell as well or better than humans,” explained professor Krishna Persaud, lead author of the paper.

To develop the biosensor, Persaud and his colleagues from University of Bari in Italy, utilised an odourant-binding protein, found in the mucus of the nose which work as olfactory receptors helping us to create our perception of smell.

The team has found a method of manufacturing these proteins in quantities that would allow them to be used in biosensors using a type of transistor incorporating these proteins. The scientists were able to measure the unique changes in current as the proteins reacted to odours and record them.

This helped the machine smelling the odour and then sending the message which can then be decoded with an incredible sensitivity and a detection limit that is more or less on par with that of the human nose.

“We have produced a new chemical sensor platform. It will allow much better sensors to be developed and these could have many uses in industry,” Persaud added. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.